Before students start writing, they need to know a lot about their topic! Here is a list of a few books that can help your students gather information or be used as mentor texts for writing about inventions. These are some of our favorites, but if your library does not have these, you might ask your librarian to suggest others.

• Mistakes That Worked, by Charlotte F. Jones.
• Black Inventors: 15 Inventions that Changed the World, by K. Trusty
• Have You Thanked An Inventor Today, by Patrice McLaurin
• 125 Cool Inventions: Supersmart Machines and Wacky Gadgets You Never Knew You Wanted! National Geographic Kids
• The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, by N. Biebow
• Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum, by M. McCarthy

Focus on the writing process:

• Planning: It can be helpful to your students if you help break the prompt down into separate parts. Using the graphic organizer, you might add a label to each block based on the prompt by turning “effects” into “positive effects” and “negative effects” and even “effects if this invention hadn’t been made.”
• Drafting: As students write, remind them to include interesting facts as they describe the impact of their invention! Depending on grade, the requirements to cite their sources will vary. Regardless, if students are researching and gathering facts, they need to cite where they get their information from. Sentence starters can help all writers, so feel free to share these: “According to the text….” or “In the text, [name of text,] the author states…”
• Revising: Help students to revise by organizing their ideas. Sometimes writers clump a bunch of different ideas into one paragraph. Have students ask themselves “Do these ideas go together, or should I start a new block here?”
• Editing: Are students using commas to separate important ideas in complex sentences? Remind them to go back through their writing to check for capitalization and punctuation!
• Publishing: Connect with your school librarian to display students’ work in the library! Ask if the librarian can set out books about inventions to go with your students’ zines.

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